Livin' on the wild side

Well...so much has happened since I last wrote that I don't even know where to start! Last time I wrote I was in Eilat, waiting to move up to Karmiel to the wonderful apartment that we found. Well, things got a little complicated after that. It all started when Ben got a phone message from the landlord in broken English, the only part of which Ben could understand was something about the apartment being closed....closed?! But we were moving in three days! Well..since Ben was on base, and as we well know does not have any free time, I had to call the landlord to figure things out. However, phone Hebrish (a mix of broken Hebrew and broken English) isn't the best way to figure out something like that....so I called a friend. Adi (the daughter of Ben's kibbutz family who is living in Irina's apartment in Beer Sheva) made many phone calls to the landlord (Haim) and found out that he was anxious about having to wait for us to come move and was showing it to another person! Many phone calls later, both from Adi and Ronit (Kibbutz family again) he agreed that if we came very soon and paid all the money for three months upfront, then he would rent it to us. This was Wednesday morning....and was when the real excitement began....

In order to get up there as quickly as possible to reserve the apartment it was going to be very difficult to wait for Ben to come all the way back down to Eilat to drive back up...and he wasn't even going to get off base until Thursday afternoon...plus, the car we reserved wasn't necessarily going to even be available when we needed it. So...instead of waiting, I decided to do something crazy, rent a car and drive all the stuff up to Karmiel myself. In order to save money and avoid having to wait for a large car I bought a bike rack and rented a small car. However, renting the car may very well have been the most complicated part of the whole ordeal...

...The first place I called didn't have any cars at all. The second place did but after figuring out all the details told me they wouldn't rent it to me because I didn't have a credit card. The third (and last) option had the same rule about credit cards but had worked around it for me last time we needed a car. After running out of minutes on my cellphone in the middle of the conversation with the car place, I ran to get more just to call back and find out that they weren't going to help me this time. NO renting to me without a credit card. Hmmmm. This is where Ronit saves the day, actually more than the day, really she saved the whole move to Karmiel! She drove all the way from Kibbutz (about a 40 min drive) to give the car rental place her credit card for the deposit! Wow...what an amazingly generous gesture! She was awesome, and so helpful through all of this.

So, I got the car, took two hours longer than I expected to pack all of our stuff into it (which miraculously fit), assemble the bike rack (which I needed help with so I drove to the bike store again) clean the apartment, return the keys, get air in the tires, and head out of town. It was after 6pm by the time I left Eilat, well after dark. I actually hate night driving and could have left in the morning instead but weighed my options and decided on the lesser of two evils....the dark was preferable to sharing the road with Israeli traffic. Only two wrong turns and six hours later I pulled into the hostel in Akko (the same one I stayed at the previous weekend), breathed a huge sigh of relief and went to bed. Wow...I never ever ever thought I would drive myself across Israel...alone, in the dark.

Anyway...this story has a wonderfully happy ending as we are now comfortably living in our new apartment, cooking with our four burner stove, sitting on our sofa, and sleeping in a different room than the kitchen! Well actually I should say I am doing all of those things as Ben is back on base most of the time. We did have Christmas together, although both of us were sick and we spent most of it just hanging around/sleeping (accept for a nice walk through the big park by our house...it's wonderful!). Oh...and we discovered a family park on the other side of the house that has free mini golf (on green cement), lawn bowling, and ping pong! We plan to test that out soon too.

Anyway, I'm off to the lawyer tomorrow morning to see if they can help me get my work visa figured out and Ben is going to meet me in Tel Aviv for an afternoon in the BIG CITY:) I don't really care what we do on weekends, they are just special because he is around...what different lives we lead right now.

It was nice to Skype with family on Christmas. I hope everyone had a great holiday.

Pictures of the apartment soon (or perhaps another video tour).